When I asked the pawn shop guy whether I could plug it in, he said yes, but then took that honor upon himself, seemingly giving himself an education in the insertion of the Quik-Lok cord in the process.
Upon pulling the trigger it sounded initially sounded like it was seized, whereupon the pawn shop guy might have momentarily looked a bit spooked, but then cool was restored when he rotated the variable speed control away from its lowest setting, and then on up to max.
That baby hummed like a sewing machine!
I have since cleaned it up and used it once here at work when I spied our Romanian electro-mechanical engineer cutting on a 2" aluminum pipe with a hack saw, ha.
Thank you all for your replies: nothing beats some seasoned advice when one is a bit green on a given subject.